Since Rust Belt voters tipped the results of the 2016 election, interest in effective strategies for supporting new business and job growth in this important region has intensified.

Such interest recognizes that the states of the upper Midwest share more than their swing state status. A unique economic and social development storyline unites the industrial heartland, extending across all or part of 12 states from Minnesota and Missouri in the West, through the Great Lakes and up the Ohio River Valley to Western New York, and to Pennsylvania and West Virginia in the East. The region has many economic challenges, but also boasts important economic strengths, perhaps none as important as the tremendous innovation and talent emerging from its companies and universities.

Yet a lack of risk capital in the Rust Belt has held back the region’s capacity to translate its formidable innovation and talent assets into new businesses and jobs. That’s beginning to change, but public policies could do much more to accelerate the development of a robust innovation infrastructure equal to the Midwest’s potential.

The Midwest’s significant innovation assets are gaining more attention

Home to more than 200 of the nation’s Fortune 500 companies and 20 of the world’s top 200 research universities, the upper Midwest generates 26 percent of the nation’s corporate and university patents and 31 percent of its university-based research and development. The latter includes more than one-third of the nation’s highly competitive National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding, key to the creation of new drugs and medical technologies.

The region’s formidable network of colleges and universities means it also punches above its weight in generating talent. With 31 percent of the nation’s population, schools in Rust Belt states produce 35 percent of the nation’s total bachelor’s degree holders, 33 percent of its STEM graduates, and 32 percent of all higher education degrees awarded in the United States.

The power of these assets to drive local technology-based economic development, and contribute to a modern, post-Rust Belt economic reality and storyline, is increasingly evident across the region. According to commercial real estate services firm CBRE, three of the top 10 fastest-growing Tech Talent Markets in North America in 2018 were Madison, Wisc. (#3), Pittsburgh (#5), and Cleveland (#8). Similarly, innovation guru Ian Hathaway’s latest report on startup communities notes Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis among those continuing to expand, with Pittsburgh, Madison, and Ann Arbor, Mich. among those rising faster than national peers. The presence of top-flight research institutions and universities in these same markets (e.g., University of Wisconsin, Carnegie Mellon, Ohio State University, University of Michigan, and Cleveland Clinic) is no coincidence. PitchBook finds that the presence of highly ranked research universities and top-tier colleges is one factor behind Michigan and Pennsylvania’s strong performance on talent retention.

These positive trends reflect the increasing return to the region of capital and talent that once fled to the coasts for opportunity. Entrepreneurs and investors, including coastal venture capitalists and wealthy regional “ex-pats,” are discovering and investing in the talent, ideas, and technologies generated in the region. Techstars’ Ted Serbinski, who operates out of Detroit, tells Crain’s Detroit, “This is arguably one of the most talented regions in America, churning out the most real, revenue generating businesses. None of these social networks that will ‘figure it out later.’” Serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Blank notes, “Silicon Valley is out of A players. Don’t start your company here. Start it in Ann Arbor. You won’t find the talent you need here. It’s in Ann Arbor.” And Ohio Innovation Fund manager and Silicon Valley refugee Bill Baumel writes in Venture Beat, “I see more ‘Silicon Valley-quality’ companies [here] in medical technology, cybersecurity, data science, and advanced manufacturing that have grown over 100 percent annually to tens of million in revenue with sights on $100 million, and have more prominent customers including a majority of the Fortune 500 and leading universities.”

Some investors are giving the Midwest a closer look for reasons beyond the region’s strong fundamentals. The results of the 2016 election prompted many to see how they could contribute to the economic, cultural, and political transformation of the Rust Belt. This theme helps animate Steve Case and JD Vance’s Rise of the Rest Fund, as well as former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s significant new investments in Detroit. These investors and others also worry that tech giants who are trapped in the Silicon Valley bubble are isolated from large swaths of the nation’s people and politics, and risk blame for its woes. As the Dallas Morning News argues:

By locating in emerging tech hubs outside Silicon Valley, leading venture capitalists could gain a measure of protection against changing politics. In an earlier era, the military and its industrial complex mitigated political risk by opening bases and plants in congressional districts across the country. Moving could also serve as a form of patriotic economic development if it meant investing in “comeback cities” of the Heartland such as Detroit, St. Louis, or Youngstown, Ohio.

This interest is translating into new multimillion dollar funds closing across the Midwest, with participation by significant coastal investors. The region is also seeing some attention-grabbing “Silicon Valley-like” exits. Ann Arbor-Detroit’s Duo Security, which recently went public as one of the region’s few billion dollar “unicorns,” just sold to Cisco Systems for $2.3 billion, minting new local millionaires and promising further new technology development ripple effects.

Promising early-stage companies spawned in the region are often acquired or encouraged to relocate close to coastal investors, meaning the jobs they create go elsewhere. Too much of the talent generated in the region in the form of newly minted MBAs and budding investment professionals doesn’t find a home in the region’s thickening but still thin-by-coastal-standards, dispersed network of VCs, private equity firms, angel networks, and financial and investing institutions.

Much of the great wealth amassed over the years by the region’s companies, philanthropies, public and private pension funds, and university endowments serves to subsidize coastal VCs and new business growth elsewhere. Samuel found that 47 percent of pension fund dollars allocated to VCs come from the upper Midwest, while at the time only 12 percent of venture capital dollars were invested there (an upcoming project will update these figures).

One shouldn’t overstate the importance of venture capital to broader economic growth and development. After all, only about 20 percent of public companies are VC-backed, and many successful venture-backed companies might have succeeded without that support. Yet more recent, more research-intensive companies with powerful spillover effects are more likely to have received VC backing. As Ann Arbor’s RPM Ventures Marc Weiser tells me, “Venture capital’s ‘home runs’ create dynamics much more powerful than the ‘singles and doubles’ generated by private equity or other forms of investment—creating new wealth among talented entrepreneurs that compounds and accelerates the local dynamic of continuous new business development.” Venture investing also focuses on the technologies, products, workforces, and companies of the future that can contribute to a new story about any region where these firms emerge, rebranding them as innovative and creative talent centers, rather than industrial backwaters. This is a story the “Rust Belt” very much needs and wants to tell.

New strategies could turn up the heat for venture investment in the upper Midwest

Several states in the Midwest are trying to change the equation. They are creating state-backed funds and seeding regional early-stage capital support organizations to help commercialize more of the region’s innovation locally.

Michigan’s $400 million 21st Century Jobs Fund, which operated under Governor Granholm from 2005 to 2011 (created by securitizing the state’s tobacco settlement money), was credited with spawning dozens of companies and growing the state’s venture capital ecosystem to over $5 billion by 2015.

Illinois’ Technology Development Account operated from 2002 to 2015, with 1 percent of the state Treasurer’s investments dedicated to venture capital firms located in Illinois, eventually supporting over 250 companies across 18 funds. The new Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund created in 2016 will invest $222 million from the state’s investment portfolio in state venture capital firms, and it is projected to create 11,700 new jobs in Illinois and attract more than $400 million in additional private sector investment.

Indiana recently announced that its Next Level Invest Trust Fund, started with $250 million from the $3.8 billion raised from the lease of Indiana’s toll roads, was open for business. The state aims to multiply investment in local venture capital funds and promising startup companies.

Ohio business leaders have called for a re-up of Third Frontier Innovation funding, a successful bond-funded initiative which since 2005 has translated university and private R&D into hundreds of businesses and tens of thousands of new jobs; and for the revival of the Ohio Venture Capital Fund of Funds, first created in 2005.

Another idea whose time may have come is the creation of a Great Lakes-wide fund or fund-of-funds. Samuel first proposed this in Turning up the Heat as a vehicle to raise money from inside and outside the region to invest in smaller, well-run state and local/regional VC funds, and co-invest in promising companies. When the report was published in 2010, investors were interested in making money and spotting more deals, but there was not yet interest in the concomitant social impact of supporting economic transformation and new business and job growth in the Rust Belt.

Today, there is strong political and economic interest in the region. And the venture capital and early stage capital investment ecosystem has matured and grown, with more smart VC managers and others making successful investments, and more entrepreneurs starting promising enterprises. These dynamics make the potential financial success of a regional fund more likely today than earlier in the decade.

I’ll be exploring the potential for such a fund in a new Brookings-Chicago Council on Global Affairs project (with support from a team of Executive MBA students from University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business) over the next several months. We will be facilitating discussions with key informants and interested parties to assess the feasibility and identify practical steps to develop such a fund. It could be a key strategy to catalyze new job and business growth in the upper Midwest, help more of its workers find a place in a changing economy, and modernize the narrative of a region that is truly one of the world’s leading innovation engines.

Seizing a demographic tipping point

Demography is destiny, goes the old saying. In the United States, a changing and growing population may help spare our society from the workforce shortfalls afflicting many other industrialized countries. Yet the transition to a more diverse America, including the first recorded decline in the country’s white population, is causing palpable anxiety in our politics and reigniting core tensions around race. In the San Francisco Chronicle, Bill Frey explains why America’s growing minority youth population is good news for the nation’s future, building on the second edition of his book, Diversity Explosion.

At the same time, it’s clear that demographic margins alone won’t automatically translate into broadly shared opportunity. Writing in The New York Times from his fast-changing majority-black hometown near Pittsburgh, Andre Perry urges investors and technology companies to bridge the gaps that too often separate diverse communities from the urban tech boom.

On the competitiveness of cities

While the Amazon HQ2 race has expanded interest in what makes regions competitive and how cities should create jobs, true economic development nerds hold a special place in their hearts for Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter and his 1990s theory of clusters. Post-Porter, one of the hallowed truths of economic development has been that dense agglomerations of firms, suppliers, skilled workers, and the right infrastructure, intently focused on an industry or problem, produce a certain kind of magic.

But what does this mean, in practice, for a generation of city leaders who have devoted their careers to developing clusters strategies? In a new report, our colleagues Ryan Donahue, Joseph Parilla, and Brad McDearman explore what works and what doesn’t in terms of identifying, prioritizing, and supporting clusters. Their bottom line: effective clusters strategies are hard work to pull off, and they might not make sense for every region at every time.

Can cities really go it alone?

We live in an era of city boosterism, where innovation from below and neglect from above have put city leaders in the driver’s seat on a range of critical economic and social issues. But for cities beset by limited revenue sources, state-imposed restrictions, and tax structures that don’t necessarily align with local economies, this can be a heavy burden. Michael Pagano from the University of Illinois at Chicago and Chris Hoene of the California Budget & Policy Center provide a reality check on city ambitions and a call to action for state and federal leaders: Local innovation demands more fiscal flexibility.

Are America’s housing prices too (damn) high or low?

With their stories of ridiculous NIMBYism alongside dire consequences for working residents, coastal markets have become synonymous with America’s housing crisis. But is housing unaffordable for middle-income Americans across the country? And what does it mean if housing is also too “cheap”? In a new podcast, building on earlier research, Jenny Schuetz explores these dynamics and argues all levels of government must contribute to making our housing markets function better.

The limits to a tightening labor market

A decade after the Great Recession, tight labor markets are translating to more opportunity for a wide swath of American workers. Yet, as Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman detail, employment levels for disabled Americans remain low, depend on local economic conditions and educational attainment, and portray the need for continued investments to ensure these workers reach their potential.

As many employees or customers can attest, not every business is managed well. Recent research suggests that certain management practices make it more likely a business can thrive, but analysis of new survey data suggests many small firms do not follow the best management practices. Given the declining rate of startups and their importance to the economy, it is important to make sure potential fast growth firms learn good management practices.

The Management and Organizational Practices Survey (MOPS) was conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2015 to allow analysis of structured management practices and related economic outcomes. Establishments were asked a series of questions about their management practices. The resulting “management score” reflects the extent to which firms track performance indicators, promote employees based on performance, and implement other management practices.

The management score is important because understanding the quality of entrepreneurship is just as important as understanding its quantity. While much of what allows a startup to succeed is opaque to researchers, a developing body of research has explored the significance of management practices.

These management scores are correlated with positive firm outcomes; for example, a 10 percent increase in management score corresponds to a 5 to 14 percent increase in labor productivity.

Small firms often lack the management skills necessary to help their firms grow.

The figure below depicts the profile of an average management score with respect to firm size (left panel) and firm age (right panel). As one might expect, the management score improves substantially as the number of employees increases. Large firms became large in part because they possessed superior management techniques, and perhaps in part because expansion necessitated an improvement in management. This account is complicated, however, by the fact that 40 percent of management score variation exists within multi-establishment firms, with some establishments deploying much more effective practices than others.

While many entrepreneurs do not aim to create a large business, those who do are critical to economic growth. New firms introduce new products, challenge incumbents to improve, and improve labor productivity when new productive firms hire workers away from existing less productive firms. But analysis shows that business dynamism in the United States has been falling for decades. In fact, startups as a fraction of all firms have fallen from 14 percent in 1979 to 8 percent in 2014, a decline that occurred in every major industry. Young firms now employ only 19 percent of all workers, well below the 33 percent they employed thirty years ago. New firms are more likely to make substantial economic contributions when they are equipped with the resources they need to succeed, and research suggests training in management practices may be a crucial boost.

In response, a new evidenced-based policy solution aimed at strengthening entrepreneurship throughout the U.S. can be found in a recent Hamilton Project proposal by Aaron Chatterji (Duke Fuqua School of Business). Specifically, the proposal offers a blueprint for the creation of the “Main Street Fund,” which would limit the preferential state and local tax treatment accorded to established incumbent firms. The proposal calls on states to support startups through investments that promote entrepreneurship and a competitive economy, such as management training.

Grounded in research showing the positive effects of specific management practices for business success—and for overall economic productivity—these investments would help entrepreneurs to scale up their activities. Chatterji includes provisions for ongoing rigorous evaluation of the management training initiatives, which would allow states to find the most effective means of supporting startups.

It is imperative that new and innovative policy solutions, such as Chatterji’s Main Street Fund, are implemented to strengthen U.S. entrepreneurship and the conditions that support it.

SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

The third Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) comprises targets that are challenging for many countries. Target focuses range from maternal and child health and infectious diseases to non-communicable diseases and injuries, with an overarching goal of universal health coverage.

The players associated with each target are also diverse. National governments, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other U.N. agencies, and various organizations work to move the needle on global health. The World Bank and other multilateral development banks play an important role in global health financing, as do private philanthropic organizations and high-income donor countries.

My chapter in “From Summits to Solutions” reviews the global efforts by these players in recent years and identifies areas for which extensive mobilization at the global level is being pursued. I seek to identify a set of criteria by which the activities of existing alliances, partnerships, and other international health regimes can be evaluated for a better global collective action for health under the SDGs.

In the Millennium Development Goal era, global health governance was largely characterized by the proliferation of global health initiatives. In the Sustainable Development Goal era, our vision of global health governance needs to be broadened to focus not only on the individual health initiatives, but also their interactions with each other.

Meeting the challenges in achieving the 2030 targets will require a renewed effort to resolve coordination problems across global health initiatives so that the international health community can reconcile diverse agendas and constituencies to improve health and well-being for all.

Sinclair Broadcasting has a right to establish that that they did not engage in “misrepresentations and/or lack of candor”—an assertion by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—in matters related to its $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media. The FCC has designated the matter for an administrative hearing before an administrative law judge. That hearing must go forward.

Tribune Media exercised its contractual right to end the transaction on August 8. Tribune also filed what could be a billion-dollar lawsuit against Sinclair, alleging willful breach of the sales agreement because of Sinclair’s handling of the merger with regulators.

In its unanimously approved Hearing Designation Order, the FCC ruled that a hearing before an administrative law judge was necessary to determine “whether Sinclair engaged in misrepresentation and/or lack of candor” in its dealings with the Commission. It was that Order that broke the back of the Tribune transaction.

Accusations about misrepresentations and a lack of candor matter in broadcasting law. Sinclair should have the opportunity to see the Commission’s evidence as well as present evidence in their own defense. A public hearing before an administrative law judge will assure that due process is afforded everyone.

Character counts in broadcasting

The character of the licensee is an important component in determining whether the party is a fit trustee for the public’s airwaves. Whether there were misrepresentations to the agency is an important indicator of fitness to hold a broadcast license—and Sinclair holds 173 such permits.

“At no point did Sinclair make any misrepresentations to or attempt to mislead the FCC in its applications,” the company’s legal counsel wrote to the General Counsel of The Brookings Institution, expressing unhappiness with my July 25th commentary in TechTank titled “How far will the FCC pursue Sinclair Broadcasting’s ‘misrepresentations’ now that Trump has intervened?” The company should have the right to support that position in an open, on-the-record proceeding.

The importance of the FCC following through on the administrative hearing was made even more important by President Trump’s tweet after the Commission’s action. “So sad and unfair that the FCC wouldn’t approve the Sinclair Broadcast merger with Tribune,” Donald Trump tweeted. The President then went on to call the decision “disgraceful.”

When the President of the United States describes the Commission’s decision in such pejorative and judgmental terms, the agency has a responsibility to uphold the honor and integrity of its processes and not to allow a shadow to hang over its proceedings.

Backroom deals would leave unanswered questions

The decision whether to continue with the hearing technically comes from the chief of the Commission’s Enforcement Bureau. But that position is appointed by and reports to the chairman of the FCC, so the decision on how to proceed ultimately sits on the chairman’s desk. The chairman has already said there are “[s]erious concerns about the Sinclair/Tribune transaction” and the representations the company made.

Here’s what to watch for, however: a backroom consent decree deal. The chairman could conduct a closed review through the Enforcement Bureau to avoid a protracted open hearing. The result may allow Sinclair to sign a consent decree in which they do not concede they made the alleged misrepresentations, but promise to pay a fine and sin no more.

Such a decision not to proceed with the open hearing would leave the Commission—and the public—with serious unanswered questions. How will the Commission treat Sinclair’s future transactions, its petitions to renew existing licenses when they expire, its future retransmission consent negotiations with cable operators that rely on good faith, or the new ATSC 3.0 television standard that it sponsors?

President Trump has hung a cloud over the FCC. The Commission has itself made assertions about the nation’s largest broadcaster that could affect its ability to hold licenses. The only way to deal with both of these realities is for an on-the-record presentation of the facts through an administrative hearing overseen by an administrative law judge.

The chairman of the FCC now faces a legacy-defining decision. After a victory lap for being tough on oversight, will he give a pardon to the friend of the president, or will he follow through with the open proceeding the law and procedural due process requires?

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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2018/08/13/why-a-gender-perspective-is-important-for-early-childhood-educators-in-china/Why a gender perspective is important for early childhood educators in Chinahttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/563964484/0/brookingsrss/topfeeds/latestfrombrookings~Why-a-gender-perspective-is-important-for-early-childhood-educators-in-China/
Mon, 13 Aug 2018 20:28:16 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?p=532613

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By Jin Chi

Gender stereotypes and cultural norms are the hardest to tackle when it comes to sustaining the impact of development interventions in China. In fact, project leaders have reported that even though women have benefited from social and economic empowerment, traditional gender stereotypes persist. For instance, the imbalanced sex ratio in China shows the mentality of preference for boys in sex selection before birth. But when do such preferences and gender stereotypes emerge? Studies suggest very early in childhood. For example, recent research has found that six-year-old girls tend to believe that boys are smarter than girls are. However, a gender perspective in early childhood education has been largely overlooked in education systems globally, including China, in its efforts to improve the quality of education for girls and boys.

A Gender Profile of Basic Education in China

Since the 1980s, China has approached education as a means of ensuring social equity and harmonious development of the nation. As such, government policies clearly stated girls’ right to education, and included the evaluation of girls’ enrollment for primary and lower secondary school education in accountability systems. Preferential policies and initiatives of civil societies, such as providing funding for girls’ education and skills training have targeted the unreached girls from poor, rural, migrant, and ethnic minority families. With the decrease of the school-aged population and the number of children per family due to the family planning and one-child policy, more social and family resources have been allocated to support girls’ development. Hence, the focus on girls’ education created an opportunity for China to integrate a gender perspective into national education policies, increase engagement by local organizations, and reform beyond the education sector. Together, this enabled China to achieve gender parity in education.

In recent years, the priority for girls’ education in China has shifted from access and parity to empowerment for sustainable development. This transformation is consistent with the framework of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, now that access issues are less acute for girls, gender issues in educational processes and outcomes have become almost invisible. There is little known as to what girls and boys are experiencing in school, particularly in early education settings, even though most Chinese children spend the whole day in school starting at age three. Moreover, in contrast to the initiatives for compulsory education, there has been a lack of gender perspective in early childhood education in terms of planning, accountability, resource allocation, and the quality of teaching for girls and boys. How can quality education be achieved without a gender perspective? How can gender issues at primary, secondary, tertiary levels and beyond be tackled without paying attention to the interventions in the early years?

Changing Stereotypes in the Early Years

As an Echidna Scholar, I intend to address these questions by exploring possible pathways to integrate a gender perspective into early childhood education teacher policy in China. This study comes at an exciting moment for education policy in China, as the government has recently increased its investment and planning in early childhood education as well as teacher quality and professionalism. This makes for a terrific opportunity to re-examine and inform policy.

Indeed, we should not underestimate the importance of early childhood education and socialization on the development of deeply ingrained gender norms. Studies based on teacher-child interactions and peer activities in kindergarten in Norway and Hong Kong found that kindergarten teachers convey traditional gender values through the repeated use of gendered routines, and both teacher and children’s behaviors reflected gender stereotypes.

In China, the education system needs opportunities for pre- and in-service teachers to reflect on gender-related attitudes, perceptions and expectations of children, and to use diversified teaching and assessment in practice. As interventions in the early years have long-lasting effects, it is critical for the education system to tackle gender stereotypes early on, instead of reproducing them, thereby keeping girls’ development within the status quo.

Evidence suggests that pre-service and in-service gender sensitive teacher training has been effective in enhancing gender equity and equality in schooling. In the past decade, Nordic countries have put gender equality early childhood policy into practice in education systems. Case studies of gender-responsive teaching models in several countries in Africa have found that changes in teachers’ attitudes and practices, particularly teachers’ encouragement, helped girls enhance their self-esteem. It is important for teachers to be aware of the visible and invisible stereotypes that exist in education contexts and processes.

Girls’ and boys’ achievements are strongly associated with the success of the other. A gender approach brings awareness to the developmental characteristics of both boys and girls, and benefits households, communities, national development, and social equity. I believe that the key objective lies in making the value and power of education transform the lives and futures of both girls and boys in China.

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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/08/13/trump-did-not-solve-the-north-korea-problem-in-singapore-in-fact-the-threat-has-only-grown/Trump did not solve the North Korea problem in Singapore—in fact, the threat has only grownhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/563959030/0/brookingsrss/topfeeds/latestfrombrookings~Trump-did-not-solve-the-North-Korea-problem-in-Singapore%e2%80%94in-fact-the-threat-has-only-grown/
Mon, 13 Aug 2018 19:56:10 +0000https://www.brookings.edu/?p=532596

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By Ryan Hass

President Donald Trump took a gamble meeting face-to-face with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore in June. In justifying his decision, Trump argued that past attempts to dispatch experts to negotiate nuclear disarmament agreements with North Korea had failed, but that he would achieve better results by meeting directly with the decisionmaker. Mounting evidence suggests that despite his self-professed dealmaking skills, Trump did not leave the historic summit with the decision he sought.

In Singapore, the two leaders agreed on a vague four-point declaration that was sequenced to prioritize improving bilateral relations first, and then “working toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The lack of specifics on denuclearization immediately raised red flags for veterans of past negotiations and experts on North Korea, who questioned whether Trump had squandered the leverage of a leader-level meeting and let Kim Jong-un off the hook by failing to nail down tangible benchmarks toward disarmament.

But the problem has not been solved and in fact the threat has only grown since Singapore. In the intervening weeks, North Korea reportedly has been upgrading nuclear and missile facilities, increasing production of fuel for nuclear bombs at secret sites, building new long-range missiles, and exploring ways to hide the extent of its nuclear weapons program from the United States. While these reported activities do not violate the vague text of the Singapore summit joint statement, they shatter its spirit. Perhaps more importantly, they call into question the underlying assumption of Trump’s engagement with Kim Jong-un in the first place—that North Korea wants to exchange its nuclear and missile programs for a more prosperous future for its people.

Some in the Trump administration privately have expressed bewilderment to me and others that Kim Jong-un is not seizing the current window of opportunity to make a deal with the United States. After all, the thinking goes, no other president has been or likely will be as unconventional and risk-tolerant as Trump on the matter. What other president, for example, would agree on the spot to cancel U.S.-South Korea “war games” or express a willingness to withdraw U.S. forces from the Korean Peninsula, as Trump did in Singapore? What other president would invest so much political capital in building a relationship with Kim Jong-un? And what other president would offer a brutal dictator such a “bright future” in exchange for denuclearization?

Such thinking makes sense if Kim’s goal is to leverage his nuclear and missile programs for economic assistance to improve North Koreans’ quality of life. But if, instead, Kim’s priority is to carry forward the nuclear program that his grandfather and father bequeathed to him, the program that North Koreans refer to as their “treasured sword,” then the Trump administration’s efforts to bargain disarmament for economic development will fail.

The risk now is that Trump has staked so much on his personal diplomacy with Kim — and already declared the nuclear problem solved — that he will be reluctant to reverse course. Such concerns were reinforced by Trump’s August 2 tweet indicating that he looks forward to seeing Kim Jong-un again soon.

Thank you to Chairman Kim Jong Un for keeping your word & starting the process of sending home the remains of our great and beloved missing fallen! I am not at all surprised that you took this kind action. Also, thank you for your nice letter – l look forward to seeing you soon!

If Trump meets Kim again without first securing tangible progress on denuclearization, then he effectively will be recognizing North Korea as a nuclear state. Doing so would give Kim Jong-un what he wants without delivering what the United States and the region need.

Trump could argue that his personal relationship with Kim has rendered North Korea non-hostile to the United States and, therefore, North Korea can be trusted to maintain a nuclear arsenal. Similar arguments were made in the past to justify acceptance of Pakistan’s nuclear program. Such an outcome, after decades of determined effort to prevent it, would have huge consequences. It would leave the United States vulnerable to North Korean strikes. It would force Japan to question the reliability of U.S. security commitments and move to greatly strengthen its independent capabilities. Other allies around the world likely would follow suit.

Acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear status would also encourage aspiring nuclear powers everywhere. It would embolden adversaries to pursue brinkmanship with the United States to determine the outer bounds of America’s pliancy to pressure. In other words, exposing the United States as a paper tiger on the issue Trump identified as America’s foremost security threat would create problems for the United States that extend far beyond the Korean Peninsula.

Rather than boasting of his wonderful relationship with Kim and declaring the problem solved, now is the time for Trump to refocus efforts on the specific steps North Korea urgently must take to show its seriousness to denuclearize, and the incentives the United States and others would be prepared to provide in return. If North Korea proves non-responsive, the Trump administration must be prepared to freeze the negotiation process and revert to pre-Singapore efforts to intensify pressure on the Kim regime—even though doing so is unlikely to yield the same international unity as before. Now more than ever, Trump needs to test Kim’s intentions, not indulge his ambitions.

A crisis is brewing in an Indian Ocean paradise. Elections next month in the Maldives will probably cement the power of the nation’s dictator and consolidate the control of China and Saudi Arabia over this strategic island chain. India is already deeply concerned about the implications of this power struggle.

The Maldives are the central part of a chain of islands that begins on the west coast of India with the Lakshadweep Islands and ends deep in the Indian Ocean at the Chagos Archipelago, including the major American military base at Diego Garcia. The Republic of the Maldives is comprised of almost 1,200 islands spread out over 35,000 square miles. It’s the lowest country in the world, with an average height of less than five feet above sea level. Some islands have become home to high-end expensive hotels, and over one hundred islands are resorts. Of its roughly 418,000 people, a majority are Muslims.

The capital of Malé is among the most densely populated cities in the world, officially with about 140,000 people in about two square miles. The population is probably much higher than the official figure. Approached from the sea, Malé appears to be a city floating on the ocean. The national airport is on an adjacent island. The country was a British colony until 1965, and before the British takeover in the 1880s, it was a Sultanate with strong ties to Arabia and India.

Maumoon Abdul Gayoom ruled the islands for 30 years of the country’s independence, from 1978 to 2008. He grew up in Egypt and studied at Al Azhar University, then a stronghold of Islamic radical ideas. He survived three coup attempts, with Indian army paratroopers rescuing him the final time in 1988. His reign was marked by corruption and intimidation, and no challenger was allowed in rigged elections. He lost the election in 2008 to a political reformer only after considerable international pressure.

His successor, Mohammad Nasheed, tried to open the political process and rally world attention to global warming. He held a cabinet meeting underwater to dramatize the threat posed by the rising sea level to the Maldives. But he faced constant opposition and conspiracies from Gayoom loyalists. He was deposed in 2012, convicted on trumped-up charges the next year and is now in exile in London.

Abdallah Yameen took power in 2013 and brought in China, which had not even had an embassy before 2012. Gayoom’s half-brother, Yameen has greatly expanded the airport with Chinese aid money and is constructing a bridge to connect it to Malé, also with China’s aid money. More tourists are arriving than ever, many from China. The country is now heavily in debt to China, with which Yameen also signed a controversial free trade agreement. Many of Yameen’s opponents fear the country is in a Chinese-designed debt trap that Beijing will use to extract political and military concessions from Malé. In the worst case, Yameen might give the Chinese a military base.

Saudi Arabia has also invested heavily in the Maldives. The young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a frequent visitor. The Saudis have bought entire islands for private use. This too has been widely criticized by the opposition. The Saudis are building a new national mosque, which will be the nation’s largest, in Malé—it is named after King Salman. The Saudis and Chinese are cooperating on several projects.

The Maldives has, in return, supported the Saudis on the diplomatic front. It supports the war in Yemen, backed Saudi Arabia’s boycott of Qatar last year, and have supported Riyadh in its current quarrel with Canada. The Saudis, for their part, supported Yameen’s decision in February to impose a state of emergency and arrest several top judges who ruled that Yameen must open the election process up. Yameen also sent his half-brother and former President Gayoom to jail. The state of emergency was lifted after 45 days, but the country is not calm.

India is the strongest critic of Yameen’s moves toward dictatorship. It has criticized the pressures put on the supreme court and parliament under the state of emergency and said elections should proceed in a free and fair manner. The Indians expect that a rigged vote this September will consolidate Yameen’s dictatorship.

A senior Indian diplomat told me last week that New Delhi fears that the Maldives will turn into a hostile port inclined toward China athwart the crucial shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean. Combined with China’s powerful position in Pakistan and gains in Sri Lanka, India feels surrounded. The announcement last weekend that the Maldives wants the small Indian helicopter rescue mission in the islands to go home will only add to the jitters in Delhi.

The Trump administration is unlikely to care much about the demise of democracy in a far-away archipelago. President Trump made it abundantly clear when he visited Riyadh in 2017, his first foreign port of call as president, that human rights and democracy are not on his agenda. So India is probably going to be on its own.

American interests are at stake for another reason. Per capita, the Maldives produces more jihadis than any other country, according to Norwegian researchers. Over 200 have gone to fight in Syria for al-Qaida or the Islamic State. In Malé, they are regarded as heroes. The decades of dictatorship and Saudi proselytization have encouraged the radicalization of Islam in paradise. The islands’ strategic location, the complex regional power play for influence in Malé, and the jihadis’ breeding rate should get Washington’s attention even in the Trump era. Washington should consult closely with New Delhi and others to promote free elections and a open political process. The Maldives can be a concrete issue for the U.S.-India dialogue.

THE ISSUE: On June 4, 2018, President Trump tweeted “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself,” setting off a firestorm of legal debate on the constitutionality of presidential self-pardons, and President Trump’s use of pardons more broadly.

“Ever since the Constitution has been written, it’s been recognized that the president’s power of pardoning is […] not so broad as to allow him to pardon himself.”

The things you need to know:

President Trump has made the claim that he has the power of self-pardon.

The text and spirit of the Constitution strongly suggest the contrary.

Ever since the Constitution was written, it’s been recognized that the president’s power of pardon is broad, but not so broad as to allow him to pardon himself.

This idea stems from a legal principal established over three centuries ago in Anglo-American law. That rule is that no person may be a judge in his or her own case.

The last time this issue was floated was right before the resignation of President Richard Nixon. The Department of Justice wrote that a president may not pardon himself.

This DOJ opinion is not binding in the courts. But the reasoning of the opinion—centering on this principal that no person may be a judge in his or her own case—is compelling.

If such a self-pardon were issued, it could be challenged in court as an abuse of the Constitution, a violation of the pardon power, and not valid. The courts would likely follow the reasoning of the Office of Legal Counsel that a president may not issue a self-pardon.

THE ISSUE: In just over a year, the Russia investigation has resulted in 35 guilty pleas or indictments. With the investigation entering its second year, questions remain about whether a presidential pardon of former advisors like Michael Flynn or Paul Manafort would constitute obstruction of justice, and if those charges might lead to an impeachment.

“If a president were to issue pardons in order to block an investigation […], that would constitute obstruction of justice.”

The things you need to know:

A president is bound by the same laws as the rest of us.

If a president were to issue pardons in order to block an investigation for a wrongful purpose—like a president protecting himself because he believed that someone who was pardoned would disclose incriminating evidence against that president—that would constitute obstruction of justice.

Congress has said that it is a crime in the United States to obstruct justice.

There’s a debate over whether a sitting president can be prosecuted.

Another option would be for the Department of Justice to refer the case to Congress. With (or without) a report, Congress could have hearings in the House Judiciary Committee as to whether a president committed obstruction of justice by giving a pardon with corrupt intent to himself or those around him.

Trump’s frequent use of pardons has broader implications.

Many analysts and advisers to President Trump have reported that President Trump is delighted by his power to pardon, viewing it as a sign of unconstrained authority.

Trump may be issuing pardons strategically, “dangling” pardons before witnesses who might testify against him to disincentivize them from cooperating with investigations.

The signal of impunity this may send to witnesses, subjects, targets, and defendants participating in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is profoundly troubling.